Thorndike McSplatflange. Yes, I came up with it aged about 12 for some school thing.
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Aloysius Gussetwarbler
(very) many years ago I knew someone who changed his name to Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Some years ago I knew an alcoholic transvestite who went by the name of Stella.
Excellent suggestions
/Ian Dury
Not aware of any connection or lyric.
Ian Dury had beenn dead a few years before I met Stells
After yesterdayâs apparent Tangerine Dream love-in TIL that Rubycon was released 50 years ago today 
And having got misty-eyed a few days ago about living in South Ken I later realised that it was 40 years ago this year. No you fuck off.
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Anthony âyes, the bloke who wrote A Clockwork Orangeâ Burgess also wrote music, including a âflatulent fanfareâ for 4 tubas apparently aimed at a particular music critic.
Aye, weâve all passed a lot of water since then.
Airbags, innit:
Iâve visited the North Norfolk coast where the village of Bacton (notable for a large, ugly site where a large percentage of our gas imports come onshore), stands a number of times over the years, and yet somehow never noticed it has a very-thoroughly ruined Priory standing largely ignored* in the fields:
Well âSo what?â, and fair enough, itâs all a bit Local-Things-For-Local-People: âone of them ruins wot Harry VIII knocked-about a bitâ, admittedly⌠But I never like to let irrelevance stop me boring peopleâŚ
Confusingly known as Bromholm Priory and as Bacton Abbey, it was a Cluniac establishment founded in the early C12th, which (unusually given mediĂŚval geopolitical and religious schisms) remained resolutely papist to its end - most such institutions were absorbed into British orders as the centuries ground-on.
Little survives, as buildings such as this were generally useless sans great wealth to maintain them. Unless they became parish churches (e.g. Crowland, Christchurch &c), ruination usually arose from being used as âquarriesâ to build domestic structures - an ancient English tradition poignantly evoked by the presence of recycled Roman brick in Bromholmâs own walls:
Typically for establishments of its kind, it was once home to a portion of âThe True Crossâ - (an object so widespread and numerous it must have originally been made from a Giant Sequoia). No less a person than Chaucer himself mentions Bromholmâs relic in âThe Reeves Taleâ.
Aside from the battered buildings, the only other survival of any kind is the so-called âBromholm Psalterâ (a kind of liturgical calendar), now in the Bodleian in Oxford.
Here - apt for todayâs date - is a bladder-on-a-stick-wielding early C14th Fool from it:
Bromholm has one more curiosity up its battered sleeve:
Clues are the Prioryâs coastal location, the slots low down, and the rusty bit of corrugated ironâŚ
In 1940, with the threat of German invasion seeming imminent, and time and resources limited, the base of the central tower was turned into a rather large pillbox.
I suspect one well placed shot from an 88mm gun would have collapsed the entire thing on top of the poor bastards inside, so lucky it never saw actionâŚ
A last pic, a reconstruction of Bromholm as it would have been ca. 1466:
c/o This is Paston.
*Itâs on private land, so needs the landownerâs permission to visit - the landowner is a farmer, so GLWT! Iâll try next time Iâm in the area though.
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Must be a tough life being a farmer. Patrolling your patch on a quadbike and telling all comers to fuck the fuck off your land is probably a full time job in itself. Between that, dreaming up cunning new ways of preventing access to public footpaths and appearing on endless radio shows shouting about inheritance tax and threatening to concrete over the countryside, itâs amazing they have time to grow anything at all.
Edit: some of them are alright, of course, but you know the type I mean.
IME the awkward ones mostly just stick to the old ways - locking their gates shut, ploughing right to the very edge of the field, letting their stiles and footbridges fall into disrepair and the paths get overgrown, putting âinquisitiveâ cattle into the field. To be fair Iâm OK with cattle, and they do need to go somewhere after all. And the cattle have always been fine enough with me, if a bit intimidating and/or a close-packed filthy/smelly crowd. But I know some people are too worried to cross fields with them in, so thatâs a win for the wrong type of farmer.
Must admit, just since owning a few acres with footpath along it, Iâve come to see both sides of the equation - some people are utter cunts, and fabulously troublesome if given the space to do so. Iâd shut that fucking footpath tomorrow if I could.
Being an absolutely screaming hypocrite, I also routinely cuss-out Farmings whoâve managed to obstruct footpaths on their land when Iâm trying to walk the dogs⌠Over the last 400 years theyâve done really well at it round here - entire roads complete with bridges have been removed and ploughed-up, never mind footpaths. Theyâre all on the local councils, so nothing is ever done to reverse their effortsâŚ
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Get orff moi laaaand!
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Red sky at night,
Ramblers alight 
Not the transplantable bits, or the pie meatâŚ
DâAgostino amp and EAT turntable (?) for Stingâs promoâŚ